


Proof of Concept

by yaskween



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode 4x05 Escape From the Happy Place, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 14:51:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17869322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaskween/pseuds/yaskween
Summary: Listen, I wanted to write porn, but this episode was basically a fanfiction, so this is basically a transcript of The Scene. You don't need to do anything except use it for your fics, please write more fics.





	Proof of Concept

**Author's Note:**

> "A bear batting at a beehive, how  
> clumsy the mind  
> always was with the heart. Wanting  
> what it wanted.  
> The blizzard’s  
> accountant, how  
> timidly the heart approached the business  
> of the mind. Counting  
> what it counted.  
> Light inside a cage, the way the heart —  
> Bird trapped in an airport, the way the mind —  
> How it flashed on the floor of the phone booth, my  
> last dime. And  
> this letter  
> I didn’t send  
> how surprising  
> to find it now.  
> All this love I must have felt." 
> 
> ~ Laura Kasischke

Eliot watched the memory unfold, the one he’d never let himself think about, the one he tried to put out of his mind as soon as it had happened.

“You had a wife,” he was saying to Quentin. “And we had a family.” He could taste the peach, its juice dripping down his hand, could smell the scent of ripe fruit hanging in the air between them.

“How--how do we remember that?” Quentin asked, looking so lost Eliot remembered now that he hadn’t been able to meet his friend’s eyes. He looked at him now, drinking in the details of what he’d missed. His stomach twisted with regret.

“I don’t know,” he’d said, laughing mirthlessly. “Did it happen?”

“Fifty years,” Quentin wondered.

Eliot swallowed. “It happened.”

Quentin cleared his throat. “It was sorta beautiful,” he murmured quietly.

“It really was,” Eliot in the memory said. Eliot watched him, stomach clenching. This was it. He remembered every word. He didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t look away.

“I know this sounds dumb, but us, we--” Quentin in the memory started, and Eliot had to look away for a second, the shame overwhelming him. “I don’t know, think about it, we work,” Quentin continued, his face searching Eliot’s for any reaction. “We know it ‘cause we lived it. Who gets that kind of proof of concept?”

Eliot braced as he heard himself deflect, watching his younger self smile pityingly at Quentin. “We were just injected with a half century of emotion so I get that maybe you’re not thinking clearly--” He was pretending not to hear what Quentin was saying, giving him another chance to stop talking.

Quentin, of course, had pressed on. Stupidly brave Quentin, forcing vulnerability on everyone around him, just because he was so goddamn honest with himself. “No, I’m just saying, what if we… gave it a shot? Would that be that crazy?”

Yes, Eliot had wanted to say. _Yes, that would be insane, I’ve thought about it, I’ve thought about it more than you have, don’t do this, don’t say it--_

“Why the fuck not? I--” Quentin was saying, looking at him with something like hope. His face was so open, so serious. Eliot wanted the memory to be over, but it wasn’t.

He heard himself trying to rationalize. “I know you, and you aren’t--” He wasn’t. He’d been in love with Alice, with Arielle. Eliot had seen it. He was too old to waste time pining for men he couldn’t have.

“What’s it matter?” Quentin interrupted, and something in his tone was fierce, a dare, a challenge.

“Don’t be naive, it matters,” Eliot had said, and Quentin looked like he’d been kicked. “Q, come on, I love you, but... you have to know that’s not me and that’s definitely not you, not when we have a choice.” Quentin was still staring at him, maybe thinking that if he stared hard enough, Eliot would change his mind. They hadn’t had a choice at the mosaic, he’d told himself. Quentin had slept with the first woman they’d met. It had hurt him then, and it hurt now, and he understood better than Quentin did that they could never give each other everything they needed.

He turned back to the letter. “Okay. I-- okay. Sorry, I…” He held the bridge of his nose as if he was suddenly in pain. This was the Quentin Eliot had saved—had tried to save— from an eternity guarding the monster. The brave, crazy, self-sacrificing hero he knew at a cellular level was worth dying for, the friend he could not let leave trapped in Blackspire Castle. Not without him. The moment he’d shot that god-killing bullet, he’d been thinking of this Quentin.

“What the hell is wrong with you? And what the hell are you doing?” Eliot found himself saying to the memory. “Someone good and true loves you, and he went out on a limb, and yeah, it was a little crazy, but you knew. You knew this was a moment that truly mattered and you just snuffed it out.” He looked at the tableau in front of him, white hot shame rising in his chest. “Q, I’m sorry. I was afraid, and when I’m afraid, I run away.”

Everything told him this was the moment, this was the door. He had to do the thing he’d buried deepest, the thing he had promised himself this very moment that he could never again do. He kissed his friend, long and sweet, then pulled away to look at him. The memory Quentin looked bewildered. Eliot regretted not having a memory of doing this for real, not letting it happen then, not knowing how the real Quentin would have reacted had Eliot just had that little bit of courage. “If I ever get out of here, Q,” he said to the memory, “Know that if I’m braver, it’s ‘cause I learned it from you.”

With a creak, the door appeared. Eliot walked out.


End file.
